Are you referring to me? I mean the lightning zapping the fleet...
__________________ "Vader's pulse and breathing were machine-regulated, so they could not quicken; but something in his chest became more electric around his meetings with the Emperor; he could not say how. A feeling of fullness, of power, of dark and demon mastery -- of secret lusts, unrestrained passion, wild submission -- all these things were in Vader's heart as he neared his Emperor. These things and more."
"The creature raised his ruined hand; Kylo sensed him drawing on the Force, but before he could react, his surroundings disappeared as if into a fog, and a vision filled their place. Lightning flashed, revealing cracked ground. The barren landscape shook, then shattered. A mountain erupted onto the surface. Dirt and chunks of soil fell away, revealing a metal hull, striped with red. Around it, more mountains broke the surface, resolving in massive Star Destroyers, half again the size of the Destroyers from the days of the Empire. More ships rose--and more and more--until tens of thousands hovered in the atmosphere.The vision was whisked away, replaced by hundreds of thousands of Stormtroopers, shining in crimson armor.With tremendous effort, Kylo thrust the vision aside. Everything he'd seen would be his."
That's some nice headcanon. I doubt they're going to explain this any further, or even reference it in any new material, though. It would be wise of them to just pretend it never happened.
The Bane and Plagueis books have not been canon since 2014 when Disney officially wiped the publishing continuity out. All pre-2014 works, with the exception of the movies and Clone Wars TV show, are considered “Legends” and are not canon.
I certainly haven't read all of the new canon... has there been a Disney novel that introduced Bane and the essence transfer? Because when I mentioned the Zannah gestalt idea, you didn't say "Oh, Bane's essence transfer is now non-canon, so we can't possibly discuss it."
Compared to the Legends canon, where Bane can drop the essence transfer at the drop of a hat, Sidious's body switching in Disney seems to be situationally constrained.
Your counterargument, that Plagueis used the essence transfer to try to possess Sidious, fails to demonstrate that the technique was used offensively. Instead, I read the clip you shared as though Plagueis tried to flee to some other (unfinished) clone.
No, Bane's only appearance has been as an illusion in season six of TCW. TROS novelization implies essence transfer originated with Plagueis, the mysterious "secret" of eternal life.
Because I thought you were referring to Palpatine's line from the movie, "as all the Sith live in me," not literally referring to Karpyshyn's non-canon Bane trilogy.
Canon essence transfer is different from Legends transfer in that, in Legends, essence transfer could be attempted at any time by any practitioner against any target whereas in canon, the Emperor needs his intended target to strike him down in anger if it isn't a clone. That's why he was unable to possess Rey when she killed him at the end of TROS; she slew him in self-defense as opposed to murdering him in anger.
Additionally, Bane's essence transfer failed against Zannah because in Legends, a strong personality is capable of neutralizing the invading consciousness. In canon, Sheev is confident that as long as Rey strikes him down in anger, she will be unable to resist his possession.
I read it as offensive in light of a number of reasons:
Plagueis is not known to have had clones or to have anticipated Sheev's betrayal, whereas Sheev's anticipation of Vader's betrayal is presented as a contrast to Plagueis
The only explicit requirement for the essence transfer is for the possessed to strike down the possessor in anger and hate (which Sidious most certainly did with Plagueis)
Per the other excerpt I cited, Sheev claims he presented the same scenario to Luke at Endor as he did with Rey. If that's true and he intended to possess Luke, with whom Sheev shares no genetic commonality, the technique must be able to be used offensively
Inference favors the interpretation that essence transfer can indeed be used offensively against any target so long as that target is a Force sensitive who strikes down the possessor in an act of anger and hate.
So getting back to it, Sheev's essence transfer can indeed be weaponized against powerful Force users, with the explicit caveat that they open a channel to possession by striking him down in anger. There is a possible secondary constraint of genetic commonality, but I don't think that's been sufficiently demonstrated.
In Legends, Bane and Sidious and other adepts can attempt essence transfer against any Force-sensitive target without the need for that target to lash out in anger or hate, but it's also never worked against a resistant target, which is why Zannah pretty quickly snuffs Bane out of existence.
In other words, Sidious's technique is situationally constrained. It would prove ineffective against any trained Jedi, whose creed is rooted entirely in a zen-like detachment from anger. Imagine if he'd tried this sh*t on Yoda.
(...and you know that my contention will be that Bane's essence transfer did not fail against Zannah. But that doesn't actually matter for the comparison of the two techniques lol)
Your assertion that Plagueis "is not known" is at best trivially true; you've just gotten done reminding me that Plagueis as a character is entirely unexplored in the Disney canon. Moreover, you are using a highly uncharitable set of assumptions about his level of preparation. In particular, the invention of the canon essence transfer almost certainly involved experimentation or testing. Plagueis is just as likely to have a clone or mind-wiped slave waiting somewhere as Sidious was.
The passage about making the offer to Luke is really puzzling to me, to be honest. If Luke is a valid target, then certainly Kylo Ren would be as well. Given the revelation that Sidious has been manipulating his entire life, Kylo would be eager to strike him down at minute 7 of the movie. More importantly, if Luke is a valid target then why on earth would Sidious permit Vader to block Luke's strike when he breaks down and takes a swing during RotJ? No, this line seems to directly contradict the on-screen events from a higher order canon source (the movie from 1983).
Sidious's essence transfer is useless against any trained Jedi. It also seems to require that he actually get stabbed, which can make rituals & Force techniques more difficult, as seen in various (legends) sources.
...
On the whole, our discussion has only convinced me that the novelization did little to clarify the parts of the Saga's finale that were most confusing to me. With a little reaching you can interpret it as yet another powerup for Sidious, but the ultimate power portrayed by Disney seem to fall short of the bar set by his own incarnation in DE & that displayed by other legends characters.
Yes, but not only did I never deny that Sidious's technique is situationally constrained, I repeatedly emphasized it. I've simply refuted your insinuation that the Emperor can't possess powerful Force users. He can and it was the entire point of his [initial] confrontation with Rey. But if they don't lash out at him in anger, it's doomed to fail.
So to your remark here, it would be unlikely to succeed against someone like Yoda. Not because of anything to do with Yoda's power, but because Yoda is unlikely to hatefully attack Sidious.
Yes, but it did fail.
Still true though!
"Just as likely?" No, there's no evidence for that. We have no idea what sort of experimentation was involved with essence transfer nor do we know if Plagueis or Sidious had ever successfully employed the technique prior to the Emperor's death at Endor. In Legends, Bane himself mastered the technique without ever having employed it prior to his battle with Zannah.
Per the text, the Emperor's Sith Eternal adepts on Exegol toiled for years with advance notice and preparations and still didn't manage to complete the job. Apparently cloning Force users is incredibly more intricate and complex than mass producing the bog standard non-Force sensitive clone.
Yes, much of this film and its novelization is puzzling. I already offered offhand references to other major plot incoherences of the film and novel earlier in the thread:
Who knows? With this revelation in mind, who's to say Sidious permitted Vader to block the strike in the first place?
Perhaps Vader took the initiative ostensibly to protect Sidious (or perhaps to spare Luke from a worse fate if Vader suspected that the Emperor had more sinister intentions for Luke's youthful, supple form).
Or perhaps, since the circumstances were different, Sidious considered either outcome to be a win-win scenario. At the time of Vader and Luke's duel in his throne room, the Emperor's form was relatively intact. If Luke strikes him down in anger, the Emperor could possess him. If Luke refuses or is prevented from striking him down, the Emperor can manipulate him into killing and replacing Vader and thus the Emperor has a stronger apprentice as a result... whom he might then be able to possess later on.
The Emperor works on the Xanatos Gambit and that situation can be seen as one. Either way, it's entirely speculative.
No, a contradiction is only the case when two propositions are mutually exclusive and you haven't demonstrated that this is the case. I just presented a scenario (however labyrinthine) where Sidious could have sought to possess Luke in the event Luke struck him down in anger but would also not be perturbed if Luke simply killed and replaced Vader, thus eliminating any contradiction.
Secondly, the canon tier system went away with the Disney continuity wipe. It's a Legends construct. All Star Wars works are equally canon.
And without Ben's intervention, she would have succumbed. So too was Luke a trained Jedi. And had Vader not intervened, as Sidious notes, he would have succumbed as well.
This is demonstrably false, as Sidious successfully performed the essence transfer at Endor without being stabbed.
Yes, the novel is poorly written both as a clarifying document and as a story of its own. Shit prose, dialogue, and characterization from start to finish. Please don't waste your money on it as I did.
The Emperor disabling a 16,000 ship fleet with Force lightning is an extraordinary feat even in a Legends context and he's by far the most powerful individual Force user in canon with the possible exception of the Mortis Anchorites.
That said, no, I would not say he's the equal of his Legends counterpart. With a few outliers, the baseline of canon characters is discernibly lower than Legends and canon characters tend to lack the exceptional feats of their Legends counterparts.
So if Sidious originally wanted Luke to strike him down in anger so that his spirit could pass into him, why did Vader block his strike? 🤔 TRoS creates so many plot holes
Mar 21st, 2020 12:03 AM
